One interpretation is that many people don’t have strongly held or stable opinions on some moral questions and/or don’t care. Doesn’t sound very shocking to me.
Maybe morality is extremely context sensitive in many cases, thus polls on general moral questions are not all that useful.
The study asked people to rate their position on a 9-point scale. People who took more extreme positions, while more likely to detect the reversal, also gave the strongest arguments in favour of the opposite opinion when they failed to detect the reversal.
Also, the poll had two kinds of questions. Some of them were general moral principles, but some of them were specific statements.
If you read the study, they say that the “specific” questions they are asking are questions that were very salient at the time of the study. These are things that people were talking about and arguing about at the time, and were questions with real-world implications. Thus precisely not “trolley problems.”
One interpretation is that many people don’t have strongly held or stable opinions on some moral questions and/or don’t care. Doesn’t sound very shocking to me.
Maybe morality is extremely context sensitive in many cases, thus polls on general moral questions are not all that useful.
The study asked people to rate their position on a 9-point scale. People who took more extreme positions, while more likely to detect the reversal, also gave the strongest arguments in favour of the opposite opinion when they failed to detect the reversal.
Also, the poll had two kinds of questions. Some of them were general moral principles, but some of them were specific statements.
Trolley problems are also very specific, but people have great trouble with them. Maybe I should have said “non-familiar” rather than just “general”.
If you read the study, they say that the “specific” questions they are asking are questions that were very salient at the time of the study. These are things that people were talking about and arguing about at the time, and were questions with real-world implications. Thus precisely not “trolley problems.”